The Brodie Clark Controversy: Home Affairs Committee to Seek Further Information

Home Secretray Theresa May arrives at 10 Downing Street for a cabinet meeting, under a cloud of controversyREUTERS

The Home Affairs Select Committee will seek further information over the details of what happened between the home secretary, Theresa May, the former head of the UKBA, Brodie Clark and his boss Rob Whiteman.

Clark told the committee that he had not acted outside of the "ministerial consent" and that everything he had done was within the frame of his authority. His statement totally contradicted the home secretary's statement to the Commons and caused concern among committee members that lies had been told.

The furious shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told the Commons that Mrs May should publish details of all commination between herself and Mr Clark in order to get to the bottom of this "total chaos". Later in an interview with the media, Cooper even suggested that the home secretary may have misled MPs in her various statements last week. "Until we see all the facts we don't know who was to blame for this shambolic state of events," she said.

Labour MP, Keith Vaz, who chairs the Home Affairs Committee said: "There are a lot of things that don't make sense. The most obvious being if this pilot scheme was such a success, as all three agreed that it was, why was it stopped?"

Mr Vaz said that more people need to be questioned if the committee was going to complete a full and comprehensive inquiry. "We only found out today that there was an email sent from Mr Whiteman to Mr Clark. We need to see that email." he said. "We also need to hear from the immigration minister to see what he knows."

Mr Vaz also suggested there needs to be an overall haul over of the UKBA as it clearly isn't working properly. "It would be advisable to get someone in from outside of parliament and the civil service to have a route and branch reform of the organisation."